writing resistance and desire, challenging systems of oppression, and carving spaces for we stories.

19 December 2008

"all I want is my body"

I wrote this poem in the Tongues Afire creative writing workshop. I've been wanting to write this poem for a very long time but I didn't have the words, the courage, da wibe... but the workshop, our synergy, and incredibly powerful space helped me to write this. I also have been sitting in this fantastic course at NYU on Race, Gender, & Sexuality with Gayatri Gopinath - (I presented my research in her class and ended up sitting in for several more class sessions because it was so thought provoking and relavent to my work) - and the readings and conversations added other dimensions to what I had already been grappling with in my head about the body and gender and sexuality. So anyway, here it is:

all I want is my body

I carved in my bodymemories of rape and coercioncontrol and no-other-choice sexual relations

spirits of Black women, Brown women, Yellow women, women of color, sing to me of blood and torn tissue, andsplit psyches, remember, what I had to do, was made to do

I carved on my skin (re)memories of present and past, out of rhythms and vibrations, haunted, fibrous sketches of time, spread across earthmemory

Slavery, Internment, Reservations, and so many Wars and Occupations,UrbanGhettoPoorYouthWomenColoredBlackLatinaWelfareTrapped RacialSteroesKoreaVietnamHaitiGuatemalaCiudadJuarezZimbabweCongoIraq SudanAfghanistan

I see women of color, praying and organizingI see women raising fists, voices, & pens against men, power, & stateI see women loving women, as radical, against these silences (taking back my body)

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About Me

WriterArtistTeacherScholarActivistPoet. Community Worker. Subversive Radical. Cynical Idealist. Polyrhythmic lover. Cosmic Warrior. Afro-Caribbean. Black. Woman. Trouble Maker. Revolutionary Intellectual in Progress. I have been womanish, long time, and so I dare to imagine a world where people of color can be human and free. I dream and breathe revolution and liberation on many fronts—sexually, spiritually, economically, socially, and radically. I see hetero-sexist patriarchy and white supremacy as preventing movement and advancement for humanity.